A battery-powered Class 230 built by Vivarail has been performing demonstration runs in Pennsylvania for the Pop-Up Metro concept since August.
Pop-Up Metro is the brainchild of Henry Posner III, Chairman of Vivarail’s parent company Railroad Development Corporation. ‘In the US the market doesn’t have a rich history of low-cost, quick start experimentation’ Mr Posner tells Modern Railways. ‘Typically, you have a big bang approach and you can only determine ridership levels after services have been running for a while. We can give cities and towns the opportunity to sample a transit solution as opposed to building out an entire system.’ Mr Posner points out that, while UK residents are familiar with transferring from the main line to the London Underground when they arrive in the capital, in the US most cities have at best a bus-based public transport system.
TEMPORAL SEPARATION
The aim of Pop-Up Metro is to take advantage of temporal separation, whereby lines are used for passenger services during the day and for freight at night. This is accepted practice, and Mr Posner says it enables the use of rolling stock from a different country with a safety waiver from the US rail regulator, the Federal Railroad Administration.
